


Uncovering Empathy for the Undead

by dearzoemurphy



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e06 Epidemiology, Established Relationship, Extended Scenes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29845905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearzoemurphy/pseuds/dearzoemurphy
Summary: When Greendale's annual Halloween party turns into a zombie apocalypse, everyone has to make tough choices to survive.In a situation as dire as that, Jeff never thought that he would have a reason to hesitate before saving himself.
Relationships: Britta Perry/Jeff Winger
Comments: 10
Kudos: 19





	Uncovering Empathy for the Undead

“Hey.” Britta turned so that she could tap Jeff on the arm with her plush dinosaur paw. “Drink.”

He swiftly obliged, moving her cup up to her lips and tilting it just enough so that she could drink out of it.

“Have you noticed a weird vibe taking over the rest of this party? It’s like every fifth person is on something seriously hardcore,” he asked, surveying the other guests milling about the library as Britta finished drinking.

She lifted her head and looked around, squinting as she inspected the rest of the party. Many of the other students seemed to be wandering around aimlessly - their faces purple and blotchy, their eyes dark and lifeless.

“Yeah. I don’t know, maybe people are just dedicated to their costumes and they’re all going as weird zombie freaks or something,” she suggested. She’d never admit it, but she didn’t like seeing Jeff be this troubled over something, and wanted to do everything in her power to assuage his fears.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Hey, I have an idea. What if we wandered off to somewhere more private to…investigate?” Britta said in a low voice, practically nuzzling the top of her costume against Jeff’s chin.

He snorted, but required no further convincing. He swiftly hopped down from where he was perched on the table and held out one hand to steady her as she followed suit. The costume restricted her movement to the point where she almost fell face first onto the ground, but Jeff caught her just in time.

“You okay, Britts?” Jeff asked with a chuckle.

“Yup! Fit as a fiddle, let’s go do this.”

\---

Fiddles can’t stay fit forever. After her and Jeff’s escapade, Britta didn’t bother to put her arms back into her dinosaur sleeves before they exited the bathroom. As much as she liked having Jeff at her beck and call, she was getting a little annoyed at the inability to fend for herself.

However, this decision quickly came back to bite her when a dead eyed student that she didn’t recognize grabbed her by the arm and pulled it towards their mouth, sinking their teeth into the tender skin of her forearm.

“What the fuck!?” she exclaimed, yanking her arm away quickly before they could do anymore damage.

“What was that, Britts?” Jeff asked. He spun around in time to see her shoving her arm back into the costume.

“Nothing, it was nothing. My costume just got caught on something,” she fibbed.

He nodded and turned back around to continue leading them to the study room, content with that explanation for the time being.

He would come to regret not questioning her further.

\---

From there, the night only got weirder. More and more students seemed to be aimlessly wandering around the library, fixing their cold stares on those who were still standing upright. Britta was starting to feel some of Jeff’s fear, but didn’t want to validate him quite yet.

She _really_ started to worry when his old nemesis, Rich from pottery class, ran up to them with a nervous Annie by his side.

“Hey, Jeff, it’s me, Rich from pottery class! Doc Potterywood, remember?” he asked, shooting finger guns at Jeff.

“Rich, bigger fish!” Annie chided. “You guys, there’s some kind of infection at this party that’s making people act weird and bite each other.”

 _“Bite each other…holy crap, does that mean the person that bit me was infected? Am I infected?”_ Britta thought, feeling herself beginning to hyperventilate. She quickly calmed herself and resolved to keep up a neutral expression, determined not to let anyone know that she was panicking. If she really had been bitten by someone with this strange new infection, she couldn’t tell the others until she was safely out of the library.

“We need to coordinate an orderly evacuation without causing unnecessary panic,” Annie insisted.

However, before a plan could be made, a series of loud shrieks echoed throughout the small space. The group turned to see a purple faced Leonard sinking his teeth into the neck of an unsuspecting woman.

“Holy crap, Leonard’s a zombie!” Britta heard Troy yell.

From there, it was pure chaos. Everyone was either running and screaming or stumbling and groaning, depending on what side they were on. Britta barely had time to process what was happening when Jeff grabbed her by the hand and raced towards the front door. The rest of their friends assembled around them when they reached the exit just in time for the Dean to slam the doors shut.

“Um. Um!” Jeff growled, dropping Britta’s hand so that he could rattle the doors.

“I’m sorry! I’ve been told that we need a little baby quarantine until the Army gets here,” the Dean replied.

“The Army?!” the group roared in unison. Britta desperately slapped at the glass door, knowing that it wouldn’t do anything, but hoping that it would make her feel better.

“I know, right? They said to wait for six hours. Stay strong!” he called back as he closed an extra gate on the outside.

“Guys?” Abed interjected, “I hate to be the ‘we’ve got company’ guy, but…”

Britta whipped around to see that a slow-moving hoard of zombies was starting to close in on them. They groaned lazily and were about to attack before something else drew their attention away.

“Hey, guess who I am!” Chang requested cheerfully as he strolled over to the congregation of zombies. They pivoted away from the group and towards him, and once he realized the reality of his situation, panic flashed in his eyes.

“Or don’t!” He swiftly backed himself into the study room and closed the doors, giving Jeff an idea.

“Head to the back!” he yelled.

The group took off running as fast as they could, screaming the entire way. Britta peeled off to follow Annie and Rich, losing Jeff in the process.

 _“We’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna make it to the room, my bite’s not going to infect me, and we’re all going to be okay,”_ she repeated to herself as she watched Rich fend off a zombie that lunged for Annie.

They made it to the back entrance in time for Jeff to push open the door and let them all come flooding in. It was a frenzy as they found the heaviest furniture and pushed it against all of the entrances, attempting to fully barricade themselves in the room.

“Okay, did we lose anybody out there?” Jeff asked.

Annie quickly surveyed the room to take a head count. “No!”

“Is anybody hurt?”

“No!” they all replied.

“Okay, last question, and I know it’s a long shot, but did anybody shut off the Dean’s playlist?”

The group looked at each other in silence for a moment before their question was answered by an audio version of the Dean’s shopping list played over the loudspeaker.

“Okay. It’s officially a waking nightmare,” Jeff grumbled.

As pain shot up Britta’s left arm, she felt inclined to agree.

\---

The group was restless. Jeff kept trying to call the local police station, even though his calls continued to be dropped. Shirley and Chang kept fretting about the end of days. Troy and Abed were checking on one another while Rich and Annie continued to work on their theory about what the infection was. And Britta was unusually quiet.

 _“Maybe she’s the smartest of us all. They’d have to chew through her ridiculous costume in order to bite her,”_ Jeff thought as he gave up on trying to call the police. He stood up and crossed the room to be beside Britta, taking off his jacket and carefully folding it to drape it across the back of a nearby chair. This might be the apocalypse, but he still wasn’t going to let anything happen to one of the few relics he still had from his past.

“Good thinking, Jeff. Vertical fold,” Rich called from the other side of the room. Jeff snapped his head up to stare the other man down, the spark of their old rivalry suddenly bursting into flame.

“You making fun of me? That jacket is worth more than the island you were grown on, Chiquita MD.” Jeff strolled back across the room, but sensed Britta reaching out to him before he left her side. He was feeling too fired up to care, though. No one was going to stop him from squaring off with this know-it-all.

“Chiquita MD, I like it,” Rich replied with a chuckle.

“Rich, this is a good time to let you know that I hate you.”

Troy let out a loud sigh. “Shouldn’t we be barricading the room?”

“I don’t know. These guys don’t seem so-” Abed poked the blinds open slightly to reveal the ravenous hoard waiting outside the windows. “Never mind. I will help you.”

“Wait, wait, before you barricade us in, I need to ask if anyone’s been bitten,” Rich interjected. Each of the people in the room turned and eyed one another suspiciously. When Jeff’s gaze landed on Britta, she looked back in a way that seemed almost fearful.

 _“Of course she’s scared, everyone’s scared,”_ Jeff assured himself. She hadn’t been bitten. She couldn’t have been bitten. There was _no way_ she had been bitten. _“Not that I care the most about whether or not_ she _got bitten.”_

“This pathogen is spread through bites,” Rich continued, “so if anyone has been bitten, and you allow us to seal ourselves in here with you, you’re putting us all in danger.”

He waited a moment for everyone to finish checking themselves and looking over one another. “Alright, go ahead.”

“Nice. Okay, I got the middle,” Abed said as he, Troy, and Annie began dragging a table over to the door.

“Are we really just gonna sit here?” Britta whined.

“Army’s gonna be here in six hours,” Shirley murmured.

Jeff scoffed. “Why six hours? Are they hosting the Oscars?”

“Daaamn. And the winner for Best Adapted Oscar Burn, Jeff Winger, for _Oh Snap: The Man Who Went There_ ,” Chang said.

“Those people don’t have six hours,” Rich said.

“What?” Britta squeaked.

“Judging from the temperatures of those infected, in three hours, they’re gonna start suffering from brain damage. Three hours after that, they’re gonna be dead.”

“What?! We have to do something for them!” Annie exclaimed.

“Do something? For the zombies?” Jeff asked, resting his hands on his hips.

Annie ignored him and turned to Rich. “If we lower the temperature of the whole building, would it break the fever and kill the virus?”

“It might,” he replied.

“I know where the thermostat is, out there on the wall,” Abed said excitedly. “Troy, we have to rise to the occasion like Ripley, and kick monster butt in our undies.”

“I’m not Ripley, Abed. I’m a cool, sexy Dracula. I make love to ladies, and I survive,” Troy insisted.

“I’m with Troy,” Jeff said. He could practically hear Britta rolling her eyes behind him.

“Guys, those are not zombies. Those are our classmates and they’re sick,” Annie protested.

“And they can make us sick by biting us, the banana said so!” Troy retorted.

“It’s true. Incubation only takes minutes. Then you get a stomachache and your skin turns red, followed by cold sweats, muscle spasms, high fever. Then the uncontrollable urge to bite uninfected flesh,” Rich elaborated. “And I forgot one symptom. Sluuuurrrrred speeeech.”

As he drawled and began falling towards the ground, the rest of the group screamed.

 _“I knew it! I knew he wasn’t fucking perfect!”_ Jeff gloated to himself. However, there was hardly time for gloating when they had to deal with the reality of a new zombie in their midst.

“You got bit!” he exclaimed as the others rushed behind him to grab chairs and other objects that could be used as blunt force weapons.

“I felt like maybe I was special,” Rich groaned.

“Special? You’re not special, I’m special! I was bit ten minutes ago and I’m fiiiiiine,” Britta chimed in. As her eyelids drooped and her movements slowed, Jeff felt a flash of panic right in his chest.

_“Oh my god. Was she…? No. She’s not a zombie. She’s messing with us. She can’t be a zombie, she can’t be a zombie.”_

She trudged over to stand beside Rich, her face growing more purple by the second, and soon, Jeff could barely recognize her.

“Oh, great, no one’s special!”

“You have to destroy the brain!” Chang yelled. Before anyone could stop him, he took one of his ice skates by the blade and hurled it towards Rich’s head. Unfortunately, he had rather terrible aim, and the skate shattered the window behind him instead. The hoard that had been outside managed to swallow a screaming Annie before anyone could do anything.

“Let’s get out of here!” Jeff yelled to his remaining uninfected friends. He ushered Shirley, Chang, Troy, and Abed out first, turning back for one last look at Britta before following suit. He’d hoped to see a spark of _something_ in her eyes, a glimmer of her true self. But they were too dark. He had to leave her behind.

The feeling that overcame Jeff as he ducked out of the room and fought his way to the stairwell was almost foreign to him. He was pretty sure that it might have been grief.

\---

“Oh, cool. A dark basement. I was just thinking we should be doing this in a dark basement,” Jeff grumbled.

He’d made it through the zombie crowd with Troy and Abed, losing Chang and Shirley on their way.

 _“They looked back. You’re not supposed to look back,”_ he thought, trying to ignore the fact that he had done the same for Britta. In the face of death (or, undeath, as it were), he'd hesitated. He'd looked back to see if he could save her. _“But I wasn’t dumb enough to go back for her, though. I knew she was…gone.”_

Abed and Troy began to bicker as Jeff led the way through a maze of shelves and supplies. He mostly tried to block it out, attempting to focus all of his energy on getting out. That’s what their friends would want them to do; get out. Not waste time thinking about them or contemplate going back for them when it was a clear lost cause. All Jeff had to do was get himself, Troy, and Abed out of there alive. And not get lost thinking about Britta.

_“Don’t think about her roaming around the library, maybe biting the others. Don’t think about the fact that she’s probably scared. And alone. And looking for me to help her with her silly costume.”_

His thinking about not thinking about Britta was interrupted by a sudden clatter, knocking him back to reality.

“Sh, nerds!” he called back to Troy and Abed. “Did you hear that?”

They fell silent as they all slowly spun in place to try and locate the source of the sound. Soon, they got their answer when a cat leaped in front of Jeff and let out a sound somewhere between a roar and a screech.

“Oh! It was just a cat!” Jeff said, letting out a massive sigh of relief. “Let’s keep moving.”

 _“It’s just a cat. It’s not Britta. Why would it be Britta? She wouldn’t be able to make her way down here alone. She’s not special. She’s a zombie. She got bit, she’s infected,”_ he reasoned.

He wasn’t quite sure why the thought of a scared zombie Britta was affecting him so much. Annie was probably in the same boat. So were Chang and Shirley.

_“I get not being too upset about Chang. But Annie and Shirley are my friends, too. But…”_

His train of thought was interrupted by another screech and clatter, presumably from the same cat.

“What is up with that cat?!” he roared.

“Is someone throwing it?” a distressed Troy asked.

“Let’s keep moving,” Abed insisted as they started to stall.

“No, let’s not keep moving! There is an insane cat down here!” Jeff retorted.

“But what about the zombies?” Troy asked.

“Back burner, Troy. This cat has to be dealt with.”

It continued screeching as Jeff began to chase it, Troy and Abed soon following closely on his heel. It wound itself through the maze of shelves before emerging in an unusually wide, open space, which each of the three men quickly surveyed.

“Okay, that door should lead upstairs. The thermostat will be right over-”

“Enough with the thermostat, Abed! This is not “pretend playtime save-the-world” time, it’s quarter-past “let’s get the hell out of this building” time! It’s what Britta would want,” Jeff snapped. Abed cocked his head to one side and squinted suspiciously at Jeff, who quickly amended his statement.

“I mean, it’s what all of our friends would want. Going back up there is a suicide mission, we can figure out another way to help them once we’re out.”

Abed went silent as he looked over the rest of the area.

“There. There’s a window. If we climb that dusty fence, we can hoist each other against the wall and then squeeze through it,” he offered.

Jeff glanced to his right and saw a door, presumably leading to the outside. _“Like I’m climbing up a dusty fence in these clothes.”_

“I vote we take the door.”

“He doesn’t want to dirty his suit,” he heard Abed grumble to Troy.

“For real? Why are you so worried about your cool clothes?!” Troy exclaimed.

“So that I don’t have to worry about other, more important things!” Jeff yelled back, spinning around to face them again. The group fell silent, both Abed and Troy staring at him intently.

“What other things?” Abed asked innocently.

“None of your business. None of anyone’s business. I’m just going to take this exit back here and-”

He pushed the door open, and he really should have known that it wasn’t going to be an easy exit to the outside. He heard Troy and Abed’s cries as the group of zombies started clawing at him. Unfortunately, the last thing he saw was Rich wearing his prized suit jacket and reaching for his neck.

“Of-fucking-course,” was all Jeff could bring himself to mutter as his consciousness slowly faded.

\---

She didn’t quite know who she was looking for. She didn’t quite know who _she_ was. But she knew when she saw his face that he was the one she’d been wandering around in search of.

He let out a groan that sounded like it could be a name. He lazily wrapped his limp arms over her shoulders, and for the first time since she could remember, she felt safe.

\---

“Hey, Britta? Britta?”

She opened her eyes and blinked. Everything was a little fuzzy, both in her head and the real world. And it was cold. Almost unbearably so.

“Jeff?”

“Oh my god, Britts, you’re okay,” he breathed, the words rushing out like they were all one syllable.

She scoffed. “Yeah, I’m fine. Of course I’m fine! I-”

Before Britta could continue to protest, Jeff lunged forward and captured her in a tight embrace. She slowly raised her arms to return the hug and timidly patted him on the back.

“What happened, do you know?” she asked as he reluctantly let her go.

“I think we all became zombies? But it’s all a little fuzzy. Probably because we were zombies,” he said.

She laughed. “Leave it to Greendale to harness the power of the undead. Do you remember if I turned you into a zombie? Or vice versa?”

Jeff thought for a moment, staring off into the space behind her. “Neither, I don’t believe. Because…I remember worrying about you.”

“You _worried_ about me?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah. Because you got turned first, and we had to leave you behind in the zombie hoard.”

“Rude.”

“Hello, we wanted to survive?”

Britta couldn’t help but laugh at how genuinely offended he sounded. “I know, I know. You did the right thing.”

“Well, um, I worried about you. The whole time I was trying to get out. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, all alone and zombified…”

“So Jeff Winger _does_ have a heart,” she remarked snidely.

He rolled his eyes. “No I don’t. Just…seeing you looking all dead…”

Britta’s expression softened, as did her heart. “It’s okay. You don’t have to admit that you actually care about me.” She turned to look at the rest of the partygoers around them, slowly waking up one-by-one.

“The rest of our friends have to be around here somewhere, let’s go find them,” she suggested, starting to stand up from where the two of them were collapsed on the floor.

“Wait,” Jeff insisted. The single word sounded so desperate, so haunting, that she couldn’t help but slide back down next to him.

“Yes?”

“I do actually care about you. I care about you a lot. And I can’t believe it took a fucking life-or-death situation where I thought you might end up dead for me to admit that.”

Britta thought he might be lying, or at least stretching the truth just for another shot of getting in her pants (or, T-Rex costume, as it were). But when she looked in his eyes, she couldn’t find a scrap of old lawyer Jeff hiding anywhere inside them.

“Okay. I…care about you, too. I think I might have spent most of my time as a zombie looking for you,” she admitted. “Probably just because you’ve been feeding me and giving me drinks all night.”

“I was worried about that,” Jeff said softly. Britta settled down beside him as he reached over to brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear. His fingertips graced the side of her face with a certain timidity that Britta had never seen from him before.

“Listen, this might sound crazy,” he started.

“Whatever follows that statement is _always_ good.”

Jeff cracked a smile. “I know we haven’t been hooking up for long, and maybe it’s the adrenaline talking, but life is so unpredictable, you know?”

Britta narrowed her eyes and tried to study the lines of his face for a single clue as to what was currently happening. “What’s your point?”

“Date me. Like, for real. I want to be your boyfriend. I want you to be my girlfriend, like Slater was. Fuck what the group thinks, you know? They’ll adjust to it, they always do. They’re more mature than we give them credit for. Hell, _we’re_ not mature. We’re all just dumb kids! We’re dumb, 30-something year old kids. So please, Britta. Please date me.”

“Well, that has to be hands-down the weirdest way I’ve ever been asked out,” she quipped. Jeff’s face fell, and she instantly felt the need to do damage control.

“What I mean is that…I’ve never really…done that with someone that I care about before.”

“If I can do it, you can do it. You’ve got a way bigger and better heart than me.”

Britta bit her lip. “I’m not so sure about that. You're the one who spent this whole night worried about me."

"And you've spent a year and a half worrying about all of us. Again, it took a literal zombie apocalypse to admit that I cared about you."

She looked down at the ground and tried to curl her fingers around the carpet. This _certainly_ wasn't a conversation that she'd ever expected to have, and the zombie-induced brain fog wasn't helping. But here was her best friend, her fuck buddy, her who-the-hell-knows, her _Jeff_ , sitting in front of her and looking at her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

"I just don't know if I can do that," she said, her voice cracking as she dared to meet his gaze once more.

“Okay. Then we don’t have to, we can go back to doing what we were doing.”

Somehow, that didn’t sound quite right to Britta. So she took a deep breath. 

“Wait, no. I don't know if I can. But...I want to try. We can try doing this for real, and stop sneaking around.”

“Really?!” Jeff squeaked, like her response was the last thing he’d been expecting.

“Really,” she confirmed. “What sold me was the fact that you were so worried about me, you big softie.” Britta playfully shoved him with her shoulder, which Jeff only used as leverage to pull her in closer to his chest.

“God, I feel so stupid.”

“Me too.”

Britta wasn’t quite sure why, exactly. But she didn’t really care to think about it too much, since Jeff was moving to cup her chin and pull her in and now she _really_ felt dumb as he kissed away whatever sense she had left.

\---

They woke up a second time. This time, everything was even fuzzier.

They were in the study room. That made sense, that’s where they had gone after their bathroom rendezvous. Paramedics were swarming all around, students were trudging through the halls, and the ones in the worst shape were being put on stretchers and wheeled out of the building.

Jeff and Britta were, all things considered, fine. Just like everyone else, they didn’t have a clue in the world what had happened past a certain point. All they knew was that it was late, and everyone had been drugged.

“I can’t believe someone would mass-roofie an entire party,” Britta grumbled.

“I can’t believe it wasn’t me,” Chang replied.

“I can’t believe I believe you. And I don’t,” Jeff retorted.

Britta chuckled. “Whatever. I think I need to go sleep whatever this is off.”

“Can I join you?” Jeff requested suggestively, leaning his head over onto her shoulder and practically batting his eyelashes. She laughed again and pushed him off with little force.

“So you want a round two, even after all this craziness?”

“You know me well enough to know that I’m _always_ down for a round two.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“And yet, you’re still probably going home with me.”

Britta sighed in disgust, probably more at herself than at Jeff. “That’s fair. We can be gross together.” She cast off the blanket that had been wrapped around her shoulders and picked the limp, unoccupied arms of her costume out from underneath it. “So your place, then?”

“Of course. Did you bring a change of clothes so that you don’t have to put that back on to leave in the morning?” Jeff asked, gesturing to her costume.

“…we’re going to my place instead.”

“Works for me.”

Jeff slid off the table first so that he could help Britta down after him. She rolled her eyes at his chivalry, but took his hand anyway. She didn’t let it go as they left the library, both feeling as though something was different. Something that would never truly be the same.

It was a pity that neither of them could remember quite what it was.

**Author's Note:**

> Epidemiology is a near perfect episode, so what could possibly make it better? not one, but _two_ forgotten confessions of love is the answer my brain came up with!! an unfinished form of this has been in my docs for months, so I was happy to finally finish it. 
> 
> let me know what you thought in a comment if you're so inclined!! hope you all are doing well and have a great day or night <3


End file.
